Superbubble

Credit: ESO/Manu Mejias

Stars blow a super bub­ble in neb­ula LHA 120-N 44 in this image from the Euro­pean South­ern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.

Explore the cav­i­ties within the swirling gas and dust of this neb­ula in the Large Mag­el­lanic Cloud. What sto­ries or pat­terns do you see? Leave a note below.

The young star clus­ter NGC 1929 sculpts the inside of the neb­ula from which it was born. Tor­ren­tial stel­lar winds and blis­ter­ing ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion push out the gas and dust of the neb­ula; cre­at­ing a huge bub­ble. This act frees the stars from their stel­lar cocoon. As the gas and dust move out­ward, they slam into the calm space sur­round­ing the neb­ula. This heats the gas and causes it to glow with the reds and blues we see. Ultra­vi­o­let radi­a­tion from the new stars also causes the gas to glow.

NGC 1929 and LHA 120-N 44 are found in the Large Mag­el­lanic Cloud. The LMC is vis­i­ble from the south­ern hemi­sphere as a faint glow­ing cloud in the sky. The cloud is an irreg­u­lar dwarf galaxy found near the Milky Way Galaxy. It is located about 160,000 light-years away and is the third clos­est galaxy after the Sagit­tar­ius Dwarf and the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxies.